Fever Ray - Seven Remixes

Fever Ray - Seven Remixes
The latest single from Sweden's Fever Ray comes loaded with a heap of remixes by names needing no introduction here: Troxler, Dettmann and Martyn among them. Karin Anderssen's compositions, less clubby than her work in The Knife but more melodically developed, would seem ready made for reworks, full of spare, moody electronics and tantalizing texture. Oh, and that voice, that instantly recognizable voice, serpentine, witchlike, giving a spooky edge even to lyrics as innocuous as "I have a friend I've known since I was seven...we used to talk on the phone…we talk about love, about dishwasher tablets."

The more distinctive versions here make their mark by foregrounding the gap between Anderssen's original vocal and their own newly-added material. Martyn's dubstep jam is a prime example: The vocal doesn't precisely fit, meaning you can tell right away that it's a remix, but the disjunction between voice and beats actually gives the track a bit more of an edge, in comparison to, say, Nic Chacona's take, which is straightforward dreamy-housey dance floor glitz. CSS also attempts to re-fit the entire tune, transforming it into some slow-mo cosmic funk that finds its groove once the 808 claps get flurrying, while Troxler also goes for the same glitzy minimal house as Chacona but pushes the vocal into a weirdly disorienting, arrhythmic space atop the beat.

Mr. Dettmann's on board for two takes here, ostensibly so he could have enough room to accommodate his varied interests. One is a speechless, driving minimal techno banger, and the other, called "Voice In My Head mix," is up there with Karin's own work in terms of inspired weirdness, taking nothing other than a heavily filtered vocal loop—wispy and ghostlike—and threading it across a bare and warbly beat. It pushes the envelope in its own way, as do Crookers, whose skittery, hyperactive electro workout takes flight once it sheds a series of repetitive vocal loops. (It subsequently lifts off into several minutes of what sounds like a rotary phone dogfighting a demonic air horn.) Ultimately, these two versions are the EP's standout WTF? moments, reflecting Fever Ray's own taste for novel, unpredictable productions.